


gravity is inevitable only when we want it to be

by iphigenias



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: Jack comes out in a three-sentence press release at the end of his fourth season with the Falconers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i have???? so much work to do????? and yet here we are. this is my first time writing check, please! fic, so pls be gentle with me. i'm still getting a handle on writing my boys
> 
> this fic is also a belated birthday present for marnie (see?? i can write happy stuff!!)

Jack comes out in a three-sentence press release at the end of his fourth season with the Falconers. He and Bitty switch off their phones when the media gets hold of it, and spend the day laughing, baking peach cobbler and maple crusted apple pie, and throwing flour in each other’s hair until they both resemble living snowmen. When Jack switches his phone back on later that night, he ignores the Twitter and email notifications and instead opens his text messages, where there are 27 unread. He skips past the ones from his manager and some of his teammates, heart beating fast, and instead opens the ones from the people he trusts the most.

 

(From: Shitty 10:18)

_SO PROUD OF U BRAH!!!!!11!1!!!!!_

_lmk if u n bits need anything_

(10:19)

_*let me know btw_

(11:32)

_lardos home n she says congrats_

(11: 34)

_hey jack, this is lardo. i’m so happy for you and bitty! don’t listen to anything the bad press says, okay? we’re all here for you xxxxx_

(11:35)

_oh, and shitty’s been crying since they dropped the press release :’)_

 

(From: Ransom 10:26)

_jack, dude, so happy for u!!!!!!!! tell bitty I said hi :-)_

 

(From: Holster 10:40)

_GET IT BOI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_;) ;) ;)_

 

(From: Tater 10:47)

_Jack, me and boys so happy and proud for you and your boy! Tell Eric he bring us pies whenever now! :D_

 

(From: Maman 10:50)

_Jack, your father and I are so proud of you. Tell Eric I said hello! I love you so much, mon cher._

 

(To: Maman 22:18)

_Oui maman. I love you too._

 

Jack presses _send_ and exits out of his messages back to the home screen, where his wallpaper is a picture of Bitty smiling, caught off-guard, a smudge of batter across his cheekbone. Jack stares at it for a long time, before opening the photos app and carefully saving the picture as his lock screen as well, replacing the generic one of the Falconers logo he’s had on there for months. A buttery warm weight settles in his chest. He’ll answer the rest of the messages tomorrow, but for now, Bitty is waiting for him. Jack smiles, and switches off his phone.

 

*

 

They’re grocery shopping together, but Bitty has sent Jack away to the fresh produce section while he browses the spices. Jack has a list of all the fruit and vegetables they need, and methodically works his way through the stands until the shopping cart is almost half-full. Jack stops by a display of just-ripened Georgia peaches, grins, then pulls out his phone and sends a Snapchat to Bitty.

 

_I think you’re sweeter than a [peach emoji]_

 

Bitty opens the Snap almost immediately. In the time it takes him to respond, Jack fills a bag with the peaches and places them on top of the tomatoes in his cart. When he looks back down at his phone, there’s a Snapchat from Bitty waiting for him. It’s a selfie, Bitty’s cheeks flushed bright red, a hand half-covering his smile.

 

_mssr. zimmermann, if you keep distracting me we won’t be out of here until midnight!_

 

Jack screenshots the Snap just before it times out and pockets his phone, grinning. He wheels the cart to the aisle he last saw Bitty in and sees him looking down at his phone, hand still covering his mouth and cheeks still pinker than the peaches Jack just bagged. Bitty looks up as Jack makes his way towards him, and rolls his eyes in mock-exasperation.

“Jack, you can’t screenshot every selfie I send you! Oh Lord, there must be hundreds on that phone of yours by now.”

Jack shrugs. He has a folder on his phone for Bitty’s selfies. He likes flicking through them when he’s on the road and Bitty can’t Skype him, almost like there’s a piece of his boyfriend he can carry around even when he’s halfway across the country.

“I think you should be more concerned about the fact that I’ve finished my part of the shopping and you’re _still_ looking at the spice rack.”

“Oh, hush,” Bitty says, slapping him lightly on the arm. “I couldn’t decide whether I wanted sweeter or more savoury ones. And besides, _someone_ was distracting me.”

He hip-checks Jack but instead of pulling away Jack catches his elbows and gently reels him until there’s no breathing space between them. He leans down and gives Bitty a soft, chaste kiss, still clutching his elbows. Bitty’s eyes have fluttered shut by the time Jack pulls away.

“Sweet,” he says, and Bitty looks up at him in confusion. “For the spices,” he clarifies, giving his boyfriend a gentle shove. Bitty makes a _huh_ sound but is smiling, and Jack has to look away because his heart feels so full. “Race you to the check-out,” he says, pushing his cart down the aisle and taking off after it with a laugh, which only gets louder when he hears Bitty yelling after him.

 

*

 

“Jack, honey, why is there a rabbit in our living room?”

Jack wipes the last bit of shaving cream from his chin and leaves the bathroom, finding Bitty standing by the couch and staring at the fat rabbit currently sitting in a box on the coffee table.

“Um,” Jack says. “Surprise?”

“Jack Zimmermann, you did _not_ buy us a pet on the one day I was out of town. Please tell me you didn’t.”

“Well,” Jack says, but can’t think of anything else to say.

Bitty dumps his bag on the couch and his keys on the holder by the kitchen door. He walks forward carefully, hands on hips, and peers down at the rabbit with wide eyes. “Jack, honey, do we even know how to take care of a rabbit?”

“I looked it up,” Jack hurries to say, stepping closer so he’s right beside Bitty and stares down at the rabbit as well. “And I got some stuff for him already, you know, when I, um.”

“When you bought him.” Bitty looks up at Jack and shakes his head, but his expression is fond. “Well, if you think we’re naming him anything but Señor Bun, you would be severely mistaken.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack says, and he’s starting to smile. Bitty looks back down at the rabbit—at their rabbit—and gives a soft laugh.

“Then welcome to the family, Señor,” he says, and gives Jack a kiss that neither of them can quit smiling through.

 

*

 

Jack wakes early the morning of his thirtieth birthday. Bitty is curled up beside him in bed like a human-sized parenthesis, bracketing Jack’s heart between his ribs and keeping it safe. The sun is streaming softly through the curtains they forgot to close last night, and Jack lets out a long, slow breath the way his therapist taught him. He doesn’t feel any different. He doesn’t know why he expected to, but thirty just feels so far removed from the twenty-nine he’d been only yesterday, from the twenty-five Bitty turned last May. But it’s not a bad feeling, Jack realises abruptly, syrupy warm beneath a sheet and a doona and with a human furnace sleeping beside him. He thinks back to where he was ten years ago, and how back then, he could never have imagined a life like this for himself. Could never have imagined being this _happy_.

Jack must have made some kind of noise because Bitty gives a soft snuffle and sleepily opens his eyes, blinking up at Jack with that molasses-slow awareness of the just woken up. A blinding smile unfurls across his face that makes Jack feel warmer than the sun ever could, and then Bitty is reaching up and kissing him, and everything else falls away for a while.

“Happy birthday honey,” Bitty whispers into the kiss, rolling on top of Jack and straddling him, laughing softly as Jack bumps his head against the bedframe. He glances at Jack’s phone on the bedside table and shakes his head fondly. “Shitty will have sent you a dozen birthday messages by now,” he says, leaning down to rest his head on Jack’s chest so he can hear his heartbeat. The first time Bitty had done this, years ago now, Jack’s pulse had jumped and he’d pushed Bitty away, ashamed almost at once for doing so, embarrassed at feeling so vulnerable, and so scared to let it show. Now, Bitty listens to that steady _thump, thump_ and lets Jack run his fingers through his hair, in time with the rhythm.

“I’ll check them later,” Jack says softly, closing his eyes and happy to just exist in the same space as Bitty for as long as he can.

“He’s just sent another,” Bitty reports, lifting his head and glancing at the lit-up phone screen. “ _A dozen birthday kisses_. Hmph.”

“The only person I want birthday kisses from is you, Bits,” Jack says, and then steals one, just for good measure. Bitty laughs, high and clear and unrestrained, and Jack’s heart could overflow from everything inside of it. “I love you.”

“Oh, honey.” Bitty smooths the crease between Jack’s eyebrows and places a kiss in the spot where it had been. “I love you too. _Je t’aime._ ” This time it’s Jack who laughs at Bitty’s mangled French, but Bitty shuts him up pretty quickly after that.

He doesn’t get around to answering Shitty until that afternoon.

 

*

 

It’s their first game of the new season, and Jack’s first time on competition ice since he came out. Bitty is in the crowd with Shitty, Lardo and Jack’s parents, and when Jack sees him there wearing the Zimmermann jersey, he swears his heart grows two sizes. Tater gives him a wink as he skates past, and all Jack can do is grin.

He’s never played hockey like this before.

The game is fast and intense. Jack has two assists and scores the winning goal. When the puck hits the back of the net and the stadium erupts, Jack turns and skates up towards the crowd, pointing straight at Bitty in the stands until the camera finds him and broadcasts Bitty’s bright red, beaming face onto national television. Shitty and Lardo are going nuts beside him, but Bitty is looking at Jack, looking and looking until play resumes and Jack has to skate away, but Jack carries that look with him through the final minutes like a burning candle inside, a reminder of all that he has and how lucky he is to have it.

When the bell goes for full time, Bitty is waiting for him by the boards. Jack skates up and in front of his teammates, the whole crowd and countless camera crews, kisses him. Bitty is smiling, and is achingly and unerringly beautiful, and Jack feels like he could fly. He thinks, _this, this, this_. They kiss again under the stadium lights, and again in the locker room, and again in their parked car, and again in the street outside their apartment. Jack kisses Bitty, and brings him inside, and takes him to bed, and loves him, and loves him, and loves him.

**Author's Note:**

> señor bun is from [this tumblr post](http://sufferbot.tumblr.com/post/148121377518/the-jackbitty-cat-or-dog-pet-ownership-discourse). 
> 
> also why the fuck cant i use an actual peach emoji in this??? it is 2016 ao3 step up ur game


End file.
